The manufacture of photovoltaic cells and photovoltaic cell modules using a particular semiconductor technology, such as silicon wafer technology, involves a number of stages. During silicon wafer manufacture, photovoltaic cell manufacture and photovoltaic cell module manufacture, faults may be introduced into the wafer, finished cell or module which are difficult to detect by standard optical inspection methods used for manufacturing quality control. Further, pre-existing faults can grow during the photovoltaic cell and module manufacture steps and can result in a significant damage of the wafer during photovoltaic cell manufacture or of the finished photovoltaic cell during module manufacture or, potentially, after the module has been installed and is subject to physical stress such as day/night thermal cycling. Whilst cracks for instance may develop at any stage, possibly the worst case is where such cracks or other faults do not result in significant degradation of the electrical output at the final electrical testing stage of photovoltaic cell manufacture, but when such a cell incorporating a crack is formed into a photovoltaic cell module together with other photovoltaic cells, a breakage then occurs. This can ruin not just the particular wafer concerned, but the entire photovoltaic cell module. Thus the formation of cracks or other faults and their possible growth through the processing and manufacture stages of silicon wafers, photovoltaic cells, and subsequent manufacture of photovoltaic cell modules using such cells, is a significant problem.
A worldwide shortage of silicon is forcing photovoltaic cell manufactures to decrease the thickness of wafers. This can increase the rate of cell breakage due to crack creation and growth.
It is an object of the present invention to overcome or ameliorate at least one of the disadvantages of the prior art, or to provide a useful alternative.